If race car, then full cage.
If fixed back seats, then full cage.
If you will always be driving with a helmet, then full cage.
If streetcar/dual purpose car, I would hesitate to put any cage bar where your head or body has even a remote possibility of touching in an accident. Padding on a cage is meant to protect the helmet not your head.

For what its worth here's my 2 cents.
How intensive was your mockup and was your helmet resting DIRECTLY on the bar? If you just set the seat in and moved around you're not necessarily in the bolt-in position. Also, did you consider the very restricted movement of the 6-point harness you're installing? You'd be perfectly centered and hardly able to move when cinched down.

You have more room than many so if you considered all the other items above then I'd say its a factor of the aftermarket seat and bracket setup which others don't have. I would evaluate the ability to offset the seat or frame along with the necessary strengthening of any seat mounting points. I agree removal of the frame is a bad idea, autocross is already painful enough in these cars because I can't really see the right front wheel properly unless I'm crunched against the roof.

I don't see much reason/benefit to redoing the bar, I would evaluate the harness and seat setup and where exactly it places you in the vehicle.

what did they do on the SST build? that one you could almost not tell there was a cage in it?

Before starting on our cage, we went to NRE and took a bunch of pictures, videos and took measurements of another cage they had finished. The cage we saw at NRE was even tighter than speedsters. But the car had no seats so we never determined the amount of head clearance. Our down bar seems to be as tighter and much tighter than the Copo but we can't see how this would be safe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by woodside783

ridetech makes a tiger cage that is really good looking but you pay for it. might be the way i end up going

Ridetech makes great cages but none for us yet. The other things is we wanted a welded in cage. Ridetech is a bolt on deal. Dollars wise, we are way over the cost of a Ridetech as this custom one off stuff gets really pricey in a hurry. Unfortunately, we might have to scrap the hole thing.

We did speak with Craig at Extreme. He suggested scraping the factory liner and build further into the roof. Than we can just do a custom liner. That might be the route to go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Synner

For what its worth here's my 2 cents.
How intensive was your mockup and was your helmet resting DIRECTLY on the bar? If you just set the seat in and moved around you're not necessarily in the bolt-in position. Also, did you consider the very restricted movement of the 6-point harness you're installing? You'd be perfectly centered and hardly able to move when cinched down.

You have more room than many so if you considered all the other items above then I'd say its a factor of the aftermarket seat and bracket setup which others don't have. I would evaluate the ability to offset the seat or frame along with the necessary strengthening of any seat mounting points. I agree removal of the frame is a bad idea, autocross is already painful enough in these cars because I can't really see the right front wheel properly unless I'm crunched against the roof.

I don't see much reason/benefit to redoing the bar, I would evaluate the harness and seat setup and where exactly it places you in the vehicle.

We will put the dash in when we get back to see where we are as far as visibility. As we have it now, with the helmet on you can not have your head straight, you have to tilt your head slightly to comply with the cage. No bueno. Even if we lower the seats, it'll only take someone with a longer torso to have the same problem as we are currently having. If your 5'10+, forget about it

We were pressed for time when we realized the clearance issue so we didn't get to think about a solution as much as we wanted, but we'll be back Monday and then we'll reevaluate our options.

Is a smaller diameter tubing with thicker walls allowed by the sanctioning body? Stuff like this is a game of inches, or fractions thereof. Reduce 1/4" here 1/2" somewhere else 1/8" another place and you may get where you need to be.

Well it looks like we will be cutting out the entire cage and starting from scratch! This time we are going to tie it as close to the car as possible and we are ditching the factory headliner and making a custom one off. So basically, you won't see the cage when we are done.

Well it looks like we will be cutting out the entire cage and starting from scratch! This time we are going to tie it as close to the car as possible and we are ditching the factory headliner and making a custom one off. So basically, you won't see the cage when we are done.

When we get back from PRI on Monday, we are going to reinstall the dash and position the seat on the floor and see how we are feeling about that route.

Hope ya got a chance to visit with Donny Cummins at Racepak. He's a good dude and used a coupla photos of mine in his display banner.

I talked with Marlo Treit today (head dude: www.target550.com) and tells me that they're changing the color & appearance from royal blue to a carbon fiber black wrap. Since he's in Oregon and I'm in Utah, I can't run right over and get some photos of the process. But a photo shoot is scheduled with the new appearance. You can see some of the blue wrap here:http://www.target550.com/gallery/219...ing/index.html

Here's a shot of the short-lived blue wrap that was only seen at the Portland Swap Meet, one of the biggest meets in the country:

It's gonna look a hell of a lot different with a carbon fiber finish. See ya at GNRS.

I'm waiting on some Pfadt Coilovers....I have a set of Forgestar F-14s 19x10 with a 25mm off-set for a square set-up...Tires are the Toyo R888s 295/30....

How did you guys make out with the clearance on the front coilovers? Did the spring perch need to be above the tire?....If so, what ride height did you end up with?

Again, good luck with everything...

Tom...

Hey Tom,

Thanks for the props!

Yes, we moved the spring perch up and have to replace the pfadt 10" springs for 8" to make room for the 305's. With camber set, we have about 3/16ths between the threads and the tire IIRC. Not sure on ride height as we havent gotten everything in the car yet.

Hey Nathan Jeff told me that you guys are using the hammerhead also. Did not know if Craig said that there would have to be anything done to the new sub frame.

We spoke with Skip (Jeff's father) yesterday. Skip will be sending Craig to different hammerhead casting to mock things up. The second casting is a new design. Jeff is sending me a brochures with pictures. It's similar to the C-4 Corvette with torque arms.

Hey Nathan Jeff told me that you guys are using the hammerhead also. Did not know if Craig said that there would have to be anything done to the new sub frame.

We spoke with Skip (Jeff's father) yesterday. Skip will be sending Craig to different hammerhead casting to mock things up. The second casting is a new design. Jeff is sending me a brochures with pictures. It's similar to the C-4 Corvette with torque arms.

Got the Z/28 diffuser today. Now it's off to make molds to replicate in carbon

Basically we are starting over and replacing all these pieces we did. Dang GM for doing the refresh

Front bumper painted with no orange peel

Rear bumper painted with no orange peel

ZL1 grill (brand new)

RS head lights

Rear tail lights

Dry carbon hood (4 coats of clear on booth side. With the last coat being sating)

Carbon Trunk (completely smooth the underside and painted in satin gun metal and the out sating cleared)

ZL1 Carbon rear spoiler (satin cleared)

ZL1 Carbon diffuser (satin cleared)

We are keeping the carbon rockers just in case we can't get the Z/28 rockers done before SEMA. The 2013 1LE carbon splitter looks like it will work on the 14. We will know later this week as the front dumper should be in tomorrow.

We just love the Z/28 look and the goal is to replicate all the pieces in carbon.

Basically we are starting over and replacing all these pieces we did. Dang GM for doing the refresh

Front bumper painted with no orange peel

Rear bumper painted with no orange peel

ZL1 grill (brand new)

RS head lights

Rear tail lights

Dry carbon hood (4 coats of clear on booth side. With the last coat being sating)

Carbon Trunk (completely smooth the underside and painted in satin gun metal and the out sating cleared)

ZL1 Carbon rear spoiler (satin cleared)

ZL1 Carbon diffuser (satin cleared)

We are keeping the carbon rockers just in case we can't get the Z/28 rockers done before SEMA. The 2013 1LE carbon splitter looks like it will work on the 14. We will know later this week as the front dumper should be in tomorrow.

We just love the Z/28 look and the goal is to replicate all the pieces in carbon.

Basically we are starting over and replacing all these pieces we did. Dang GM for doing the refresh

Front bumper painted with no orange peel

Rear bumper painted with no orange peel

ZL1 grill (brand new)

RS head lights

Rear tail lights

Dry carbon hood (4 coats of clear on booth side. With the last coat being sating)

Carbon Trunk (completely smooth the underside and painted in satin gun metal and the out sating cleared)

ZL1 Carbon rear spoiler (satin cleared)

ZL1 Carbon diffuser (satin cleared)

We are keeping the carbon rockers just in case we can't get the Z/28 rockers done before SEMA. The 2013 1LE carbon splitter looks like it will work on the 14. We will know later this week as the front dumper should be in tomorrow.

We just love the Z/28 look and the goal is to replicate all the pieces in carbon.

Thanks man! The only unfortunate part is that it will delay completion. We were thinking of putting the car together with all the other pieces and doing a refresh for SEMA. But we are tired of redoing things. That would mean we would have to tear out the glass again to do the roof, etc... We just let it sit there while we wait.